Saturday, August 8, 2015
Despicable people.
A lesbian couple faked a hate crime that left their home a pile of charred rubble at their Venore, Tenn., property in 2010, local reports said.
An insurance company caught on to the ruse months after the blaze and accused Carol Ann and Laura Stutte of perpetuating a hoax and blaming the fire on their neighbor, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.
A federal jury ruled in favor of the insurance company’s belief that the couple spray-painted an anti-gay slur on their own garage to spin the fire as a hate crime based on their sexual orientation.
The homeowners intended to bank on an insurance claim of more than $276,000, American National and Casulty Company alleged in court documents obtained by the News Sentinel.
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The target of their stunt was Janice Millsaps, a neighbor whom the Stuttes accused in news reports and a lawsuit of threatening to kill them and burn their house down.
“Do you know what is better than one dead queer? Two dead queers,” is what the Stuttes accused Millsap of saying one month before the Sept. 4 blaze that destroyed their home.
The word "queers" was scrawled across their garage during the fire.
Millsap was never charged in connection to the ensuing accusations even as the FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation stepped into the probe.
The alleged hate crime garnered sympathy for the residents of the small town from a local PFLAG chapter after Laura Stutte described knowing who the arsonist was two weeks after losing their home.
“We know who wrote those threats,” Stutte told the Metro Pulse. “Anyone who could go so far as to paint those hateful letters and burn someone else’s house down, they are really disturbed.”
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